Production of cooling water by Ti3C2Tx MXene interlayered forward osmosis membranes for post-combustion CO2 capture system

Abstract Forward osmosis (FO) technology has the potential to replace the trim cooler and to supply cooling water for a post-combustion CO2 capture system. Herein, a high-performance MXene (Ti3C2Tx) interlayered FO membrane was fabricated. Thanks to the ability of MXene to adjust the structures of substrate and polyamide, the MXene interlayered FO (MXene-FO) membrane showed improved permeability and selectivity in a monoethanolamine (MEA) draw solution. The performance of MXene-FO membrane was investigated at different membrane orientations and temperatures with amino acid/salt (AAS) solutions (taurine/KOH and β-alanine/KOH) as draw solutions. Because the osmotic pressures provided by AAS solutions (104.4 ± 0.3 bar for 3 mol/L taurine/KOH and 153.7 ± 0.2 bar for 5 mol/L β-alanine/KOH solutions) are higher than that of 5 mol/L MEA solution (93.0 ± 0.1 bar), the MXene-FO membrane exhibited higher water fluxes in AAS solutions. Besides, the good performance of the MXene-FO membrane was shown with the presence of small specific amino acid fluxes and specific KOH fluxes. To investigate the feasibility of using saline water as the feed solution, 3.5 wt% NaCl solution was applied and the results indicated that the MXene-FO membrane maintained stable water fluxes and small specific solute fluxes. This work demonstrates the potential of nanomaterials interlayered FO membranes for cooling water production in a post-combustion CO2 capture system.